OT Gridwatch - demand slowly ramping up

Not noticed that but some cars turn the DLR off on the side with an indicator in operation.

parking

again."

TBH I can't remember how I was taught 40 years ago... These days it's hold on foot brake, if actually required to stop rolling for short or likely to be short stops. Longer I'll use the "parking brake". And the car does the brake part of hill starts for me but it doesn't use the parking brake.

I can't decide if your less likely to get injured when rear ended with the parking brake on or no/little foot brake only. With the parking brake on your likely to have a high G on impact followed by high G the other way as the brakes stop the car. Little/no foot brake and you'll probably be shoved forward and spun one way or the other, probably lower impact G and much lower stopping G.

My car has that "eco" feature but it's linked to the clutch. Keep the clutch pressed when you come to a rest and it doesn't switch off. Release the clutch in neutral and it does. Pressing the clutch is the restart signal, or if you just release (either) brake and start to roll it'll restart after a couple of seconds.

It doesn't always "eco", if it's cold, less than aboout 6 C it probably won't and it'll restart on it's own if the climate control wants it or if it's been off for a while.

Mine is the same. Dependent on battery condition, too.

Both...

Aye, even if on the right side of the road. Not only in a vain attempt to see where the road goes but also to try and see the people that are probably nearby/in the road/WHY.

Yep, this car has DLRs that are bright enough to drive by. Finding the sidelight switch position is complicated by the DLRs as they are on with the lights switch off, and being so bright you think you've gone to headlights not off...

Confusing, I think.

I've seen it a few times round here, on every occasion when I've been waiting to cross the road about 50 yds down from a roundabout exit.

However, the normal front direction indicator doesn't come on, just the single nearside fog light and just gives the appearance of the offside light being faulty rather than that the driver intends heading down the road towards me!

When did the law change to permit these fog/low mounted lifgts to be used? I'm sure that it used to be illegal for lights mounted less than a specified minimum height above the road to be used except in case of fog.

London Transport buses used to have an exemption to this, having a low mounted nearside mounted spotlight focussed on the kerb about 30 or 40 feet ahead of the bus. They also had indepenent headlight switching and were exempt from the law that came in in October 1958 requiring all vehicles to be fitted with two rear lights.

Many of these buses were later acquired for preservation and I recall being told by a driver once that at the instant ownership changed, it became illegal for the bus to be driven on the public highway!

I've come across that on some new buses recently but it is rather strange how it works.

Every time the bus pulls up at a stop, the instant the doors open, the engine stops. It then restarts when the doors close.

If only one person wants to get off, this may only last for a few seconds but if the bus then stops at a set of traffic lights for a minute or even longer, the engine keeps running!

A clock fed from MSF, or in the absence of MSF a GPS backup for the actual time, and a clock fed from the mains for grid time.

The difference between the two if any occurs is brought into line every day and usually overnight. There is no set time when this happens and it might take several hours or in the case of extreme events with grid splits well over a day.

Demand reduction and STOR go hand in hand so you cannot separate them technically. 1GW would indeed be a reasonable estimate of demand that could be lost.

The maximum W of STOR including demand reduction available for 2017/18 until the end of March is around 2.5GW

Usage was around 375MW 8/1/2017 and 124MW 9/1/2017, both being away from the evening peak

A snapshot figure between the operational limits of +/- 0.2Hz or the statutory limits of +/- 0.5Hz means instantaneous demand is or was slightly ahead of generation.

Every bit of synchronous plant (i.e everything but most wind turbines and solar) that is contracted for frequency support will increase or decrease the heat input to the turbine to maintain the system frequency at 50Hz.

If it is rapidly falling, dropping through 49.8Hz and then heading towards

Yes, saw one just the other day, iirc a Skoda at a roundabout in broad daylight. It lit 'left' as they turned on the approach and went out as the wheel was recentred a few seconds later. No indicators used at any stage. Personally I think by illuminating individually without regards to light levels they are a violation of design regs. They and DRL's and headlights often mask indicators, not that indicators should ever be trusted.

Indicators sited ever further inboard seem to be normal these days, and side repeaters less visible than ever. It makes any anticipation far more difficult.

Rear lamps are also beyond ridiculous. Lights so bright they obscure indicators and brakes is the new design norm. No apparent restrictions on brightness nor separation of functionality, its a case of f*ck everyone else and burn out their retinas.

Was behind an 8 series BMW the other day, the high level LED brake light is the full width of the rear window, in excess of 4ft long and an inch high of very bright red, and being an automatic the tosspot driving used the footbrake not the handbrake when queued at a set of lights.

I was taught that the time had to be corrected by 8am, which would make sense, given the overnight drop in demand.

Certainly in the 60s (the winter of 1963 springs particularly to mind) when the demand was such that the mains ran exceedingly slow [1] during peak periods, our electric clock always agreed with the GTS the following morning.

• Originally used because a slight hum bar on a picture is (virtually) impossible to detect but, once it starts to move, it becomes instantly highly visible. There were still lots of sets around that were designed for use with mains locked transmissions.

Back in the late 60s, I spent some time at Eggborough power station. There was a clock for this purpose on the wall of the control room. It clearly had two inputs - one was from the station mains frequency which was driving its second hand (can't remember if there were actually any others) forward, whilst it was driven backwards by the station instrumentation feed, from a pendulum clock which produced pulses ever second. (1)

So the hand moved around the dial, twitching back every second, generally hovered around 12 o'clock, but did move around a little over time.

(1) The kit also created pulses every minute, quarter hour etc for various mechanical data recorders, and if you contrived to be there on the hour there was quite a clatter as they all printed together.

AFAIK, at the time this was the only form of data recording that was done.

Chris

Well, the OCGT is in there tonight, with Coal and Nuclear up to the orange and CCGT touching red.

Wind is providing the square root of f*ck all and it is dark so solar isn't providing much either.

French and Dutch giving it to us hard as well.

I accept that there are areas which we are not yet into before we "run out of steam" but each day seems to be a little closer to the maximum.

Is there anything obvious that would push the demand up? Blizzard or something? Or are we more or less at peak winter demand?

Cheers

Dave R

# It's not very cold yet.

Not yet, but it looks like they got caught out a bit. There's more coal capacity available and a bot of hydro

Further to that BM reports does show a very short term price spike - as I said caught short - thats prolly why the OCGT fired up - take advantage of system prices.

The junction at the end of our road was remodelled a couple of years ago after several people failed to give way and were killed.

The new layout is excessively signed. At night you can't see anything except the signs as they reflect so much.

Andy

But does that slow people down as they can't see?

They remodelled the A69/A686 junctiona while back. There used to be a short slip road leading you off the main A69 carriage way and onto the A686. They took that out and replaced it with a corner that you have to take at about 25 mph. This means you have to slow down to 25 mph on the main A69, single carriagway, one lane each way, 60 mph limit, the chances of getting rear ended raised drmatically. Recently they spent gawd knows how much on automatic flashing warning signs that there is slow turning traffic ahead...